What is DomainPrep? Why does Exchange recommend running DomainPrep on the Root Domain if there are no Exchange servers or users in that domain?
I have been asked these questions so frequently I...
Published Feb 27, 2004
Version 1.0
Blog Post
DomainPrep does not add any servers to the Exchange Domain Servers group. It can't because at the time DomainPrep is run there are no Exchange servers (of the same Exchange version) in that domain because you can't install an Exchange server without first running DomainPrep. Plus DomainPrep can be run from any server in the domain, whether or not you plan on installing Exchange on that particular server, so there's no way for DomainPrep to know what machine account to add to the group.
The Exchange Domain Servers (EDS) group gets populated with the Exchange server's machine account when Exchange is installed on that server. Only Exchange Full Administrators at the Org level can install an Exchange Server and add the machine account to the EDS automatically because they have been granted this permission during DomainPrep or by the Delegation Wizard.
If you run Exchange Setup using an account that has Exchange Full Administrator rights at the Administrative Group level (not the Org) then you will get a prereq message saying you need to fist manually add the machine account to the EDS before continuing. Without being able to see your Exchange Server Setup Progress log, I'm going to guess the error you're seeing is really this prereq.
The Exchange Domain Servers (EDS) group gets populated with the Exchange server's machine account when Exchange is installed on that server. Only Exchange Full Administrators at the Org level can install an Exchange Server and add the machine account to the EDS automatically because they have been granted this permission during DomainPrep or by the Delegation Wizard.
If you run Exchange Setup using an account that has Exchange Full Administrator rights at the Administrative Group level (not the Org) then you will get a prereq message saying you need to fist manually add the machine account to the EDS before continuing. Without being able to see your Exchange Server Setup Progress log, I'm going to guess the error you're seeing is really this prereq.